Daily Bookshot: Bracketed Outpouring

Bracketed Outpouring, originally uploaded by Robert Burdock.

This shot shows a portion of the distinctive and beautiful cover, designed by talented artist and University of West England graduate Gaby Selby, for the recently published Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Vol. 3 (Bristol Review of Books).

For those that don’t know, the Bristol Short Story Prize is a yearly run literary award, founded by the editors of the Bristol Review of Books. The aim of the prize is simple – ‘to publish great short stories and promote the stories and writers as much as possible’.

And these guys are certainly true to their word. Contained within this latest anthology along with this year’s winning story by Valerie O’Riordan (Mum’s the Word), the 2nd place story from Ian Madden (Only The Sure of Foot), and the story that finished 3rd – Gardening by Rachel Howard, are another 17 short stories all of which were entered for this year’s prize, and all of which were chosen for inclusion in this anthology because of their outstanding quality.

Now I’m going to level with you here folks, and tell you that although you’ve not heard me talking about this short story anthology on RobAroundBooks so far, I have ‘unofficially’ started reading it. Up to now I’ve read the stories that finished in the top three places and I’ve got to tell you I’m mightily impressed; both with the quality of the storytelling, and the accuracy of the judging.

It’s difficult to say without reading all of the inclusions whether the judges have got it totally right. But I can say out of the three stories I’ve read so far, the judges have got the winning order absolutely bang on. That’s a good sign I think that these judges know their ‘stuff’ and that the rest of the stories in this anthology are going to be of superior quality. I certainly hope so.

Look out for me officially launching my read through of this anthology in the next few days (let’s get this Simon Van Booy and Kevin Barry event out of the way first ), and in the meantime if you’re interested in finding out more about the Bristol Short Story Prize and the busy beavers who are behind it, then head on over to the BSSP website and/or look them up on Twitter (tell them Rob sent ya ).

Incidentally, one of the judges for the Bristol Short Story Prize is none other than Tania Hershman, author of The White Road and Other Stories (Salt Publishing), and the genius mastermind behind The Short Review. I’m going to be reading through her collection in the next few days too. So keep your peepers peeled for that one.